


Ut amem sororem eius

by Zoya1416



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Family, Gen, friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 05:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12905283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: Everyone speculated about, and no one understood, his relationship with Molly.





	Ut amem sororem eius

**Author's Note:**

> Eam ut sororem amabat is probably a better translation, per scirepotentiaest.  
> Thank you :D   
> Now I know why Peter can't rely on Google translate!

Everyone speculated about, and no one understood, his relationship with Molly. They were the two surviving creatures from the pre-war Folly. He was the Master of the Folly, and she a servant; of course some thought he would abuse her. Others assumed their relationship was romantic and reciprocated. Why else would he keep company with such an odd woman?

No one had voiced such thoughts recently except Hugh Oswald, smirking to Peter. He'd wanted Peter to meet the old crowd, but had forgotten how much he'd disliked Hugh. The old man was weak, barely alive in his nineties, and still had never stopped being obnoxious. He did appreciate Hugh giving his staves to Peter, though-- a gift both symbolic and powerful. Power enough for Peter to fight a unicorn, of all things.

He'd lost almost his entire family, but as he'd told Peter, not everyone he'd known in the 20th century had died tragically. John, his oldest brother, born in 1880, yes, at the Somme. His second brother, Ned, born in 1885, and not sent to the Great War because of a weak heart, had, however, spent his life carousing, getting involved with one woman after another. He'd shocked and saddened the family, and died at 35. Thomas had never been sure if it had been his weak heart or an overdose of cocaine.

But his third brother, born in 1899, had survived the Great War, been invalidated out, and married a lively American girl who was on a European tour. Michael and Sylvia enjoyed golden California weather and worked in the movie industry. (Thomas couldn't imagine life without rainstorms and sleet, and the heat sounded oppressive.) It agreed with them, though, and they'd lived until their nineties. Michael had never said anything, but Thomas thought it was the attack of mumps in childhood which left him sterile. 

His 4th brother, George, had been only two years older, had been too young for the first war, and had such poor vision he couldn't serve in the next. He had met his wife in church at 20 years old and they celebrated 50 years' marriage. They had quickly had a set of twin boys and these died early, of polio. Years later they unexpectedly had another set of twins, girls, his beautiful nieces. 

These lovely girls, born in the 1930''s, had given him great-nieces and a nephew, before the family heart trouble carried them away in their sixties. He had tried to be friendly to this next generation, but the anti-war children of the 60's didn't appreciate the codes of duty and patriotism which still ruled his life. _Their_ children, barely older than Peter, were so subsumed by materialism and, to him, greed, that he had even less in common with them. 

George and Annabelle, who didn't much understand their grandchildren either, continued to busy themselves running a farm and helping the young people of their church. They were contented. George's life would have been terribly boring to him, though peaceful for a day or so when he visited. 

Late in life, one grandson had returned to them, leaving his fast--paced London life to handle manure spreaders and raise prize milk cows, getting up at dawn to milk them and all that. This was also incomprehensible to Thomas, who could, just barely, imagine retiring to the country, but not to break his back there. 

The girls, though-- Mary, the oldest, had also been utterly conventional. When her first husband died in a carriage accident, she promptly married again, to a man fifteen years her senior, becoming the happy stepmother to a brood of seven. She'd died peacefully of old age in her late 80's, with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren around her. 

He could never suppress a laugh when he thought about his younger sister, Marjorie, Madge, the baby of the family, born in 1910. She was a spinster and had never married. Not, as she'd told him, eyes gleaming, one of the knitting and rocking chair type spinsters, but an artistic and Bloomsbury type. She made her living doing this and that, she said, and he'd rather thought she'd been the mistress of several men. He also seen a painting of her, a nude figure study, which he'd instantly suppressed. 

When she'd gotten too old to model, she told him, enjoying his shudder, she'd taken over the business end of the artistic set. She'd wrangled gallery space, made sure her friends got good prices, helped them with finances. She'd ended up with her own prestigious gallery, and rich. When she visited him, she swirled in with fur coats and the next year's fashions. She'd toasted the new millennium with him, in an apricot and cream apartment in Paris; in that same apartment, accompanied by several young men, she'd died peacefully in her 100th year. 

So that was his family, the worthy and the scandalous, the ones who died in war, in peace, young, old. The ones who'd left echoes of themselves, and those who didn't. 

No one, though, could compare to Molly. She'd been a part of his life since he came to the Folly, a shining new wizard, already lauded for his superiority at Casterbrook. Already singled out, envied, isolated as a prodigy. Molly was always in the background, but still someone he was aware of, because everyone thought of her as a freak. He was himself, at the other end of the spectrum, something of a freak as well. He was good at rugby, but never popular with his team, mostly because he had learned to keep quiet around all his nosy siblings. He couldn't drink and roister. Even after a game his thoughts would drift to his true love, magic. 

He was sent because he was extra, a third spare, but his uncle's genes must have helped him. Magic wasn't easy for anyone, but he had intense focus, and languages had never been hard. It all seemed to pour through his hands like golden mist. He loved working for the Foreign Office in his young days, picking up a new language with each assignment. 

Molly was there, the only one left there as other maids had left to be nurses and aides, and the men gone to serve. She was there when the wizards broke their staves, and David... and David. He had the habit by then, of sitting in her kitchen at night, drinking. It didn't matter what, whiskey or scotch, cherry brandy or port. The Folly's cellars had been stocked for 200 wizards, after all. He could have taken his drinks to the libraries, the smoking room, anywhere. 

But he chose to sit with Molly, talking things over, watching her mobile expressions. He chose to sit there because she would reach for whatever bottle he had open, and take it away after he'd had two glasses. He could have ordered her to leave him alone, or taken his glass upstairs, or anything, but he always relinquished it. It was no one's business if they played board games, or listened to the wireless, or if she gently sat beside him when he wept.

The magic came back, and he grew younger, and bought his new car. He'd offered to give her rides, a tour of the rebuilt city, but she still refused to leave the Folly

Then, finally, Peter Grant had seen a ghost and come into his life. Molly had been resentful. She'd tried to scare him, eating raw meat with the dog, laughing in her hissing way and showing her sharp teeth and forked tongue. He'd seen her and glared, and she stopped it. But she kept trying to scare the boy, sneaking up on him, standing in his doorway at night. He'd left her to it. If Peter couldn't handle one spooky maid, he didn't need to have a life in magic. 

Peter and Molly had a detente now, a careful truce. And Thomas still came to talk to her at night. Why no one ever understood them had always been a puzzle.Ut amem sororem eius... 

He loved her like a sister, the sister who'd never gone away, the sister he'd had for almost 100 years. Tonight he had praised Peter's first successful hot fireball which burned through the core of the target. They'd toasted after dinner, two glasses of wine, and he'd come into the kitchen as usual, carrying the bottle. Molly started to take it away, and it was not quite a tug of war, until he'd laughed and said, 'Share it with me.' She smiled showing her teeth and they sat at the table in peace.


End file.
